The Tomorrow City by Monica Hughes

574 Words2 Pages

The Tomorrow City by Monica Hughes

The plot of this book centres around two adolescents, David and

Caro and an evil supercomputer which aspires to control the

futuristic city of Thompsonville. Dr. Henderson, Caro's Father

creates the "perfect" computer designed to solve all of the

problems of Thompsonville by gaining almost complete power of the

city. The computer then begins to make rash decisions of it's own.

It decides that humans are incapable of making decisions of there

own and soon devises a method of controlling the minds of everyone

in the city.

Only two young people, Caro and David, are not manipulated by

the computer. They band together and work out a strategy to

disable the computer. The two make a daring infiltration of the

building that the computer is located and after a traumatic episode

in which Caro is blinded, the computer is destroyed and the city is

returned to it's previous state.

The theme of the book is to show that technology is not a

perfect solution to the many problems faced by man. By using a

product of technology, the computer, and showing how it was

supposed to be a perfect solution to the city's problems, yet it

made a grave error in calculations, the author is saying that many

problems faced by man cannot be solved by the use of technology.

Technology played a negative role in this book. The computer,

the major aspect of technology used in this book, used its

capabilities to immorally rule the citizens and the city of

Thompsonville. The computer transmitted hypnotic signals through

peoples T.V. sets and would use them to carry out it's will to

ultimately control the city. It then discarded anything or anyone

who were useless to it's purpose including the elderly and the

sick.

One of the major arguments that the author uses to emphasize the

theme is the significant malfunctioning of the computer. It was

designed to be flawless and solve the numerous problems of the

city. But, the computer's rationing is shown throughout the book

to be poor.

The methods in which it goes about solving the city's problems

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